SRINAGAR: Indian-administered Kashmir began voting Wednesday in the first local elections since the cancelation of its special semi-autonomous status sparked fury in the troubled Himalayan territory, which is also claimed by Pakistan.
Many in the disputed Muslim-majority territory of 8.7 million registered voters remain bitter over the 2019 order by the Hindu-nationalist government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to impose control from New Delhi.
A federally appointed governor has controlled the territory since, with the first regional assembly election in a decade viewed by many as being more about exercising their democratic rights than practical policies.
Voters queued under heavy security in the three-phased elections — the first for the territory’s assembly since 2014 — staggered geographically due to security arrangements and logistical challenges in the mountainous region.
“After 10 years we are allowed to be heard,” said Navid Para, 31, among the first to vote in the cool morning mountain air of Pulwama, near the main city of Srinagar.
“I want my voice represented,” he added.
About 500,000 Indian troops are deployed in the region, battling a 35-year insurgency in which tens of thousands of civilians, soldiers and rebels have been killed, including dozens this year.
“Our problems have piled up,” said retired government officer Mukhtar Ahmad Tantray, 65, in Srinagar.
“The reins (of power)... were handed over to the bureaucracy.”
Turnout is expected to be high, unlike in past elections when separatists opposed to Indian rule boycotted polls, demanding the independence of Kashmir or its merger with Pakistan.
“All the politics revolves around the dispute,” said trader Navin Kotwal, 73, from Doda in Jammu district.
“All I care about is that we want to be governed by educated representatives who can solve our problems.”
Vigorous election campaigns have featured unusually open debates but key decisions will remain in New Delhi’s hands, including security and appointing Kashmir’s governor.
New Delhi will also have the power to override legislation passed by the 90-seat assembly.
“People can go and plead with their local representative,” Tantray said. “Even if they cannot do anything, they can at least raise the issues.”
The last round of voting will be held on October 2. Results are expected six days later.
The territory, officially titled Jammu and Kashmir, is split.
One part is the overwhelmingly Muslim Kashmir Valley. Another is the Hindu-majority Jammu district, geographically divided by mountains to the south.
A third section, the high-altitude ethnically Tibetan Ladakh region, bordering China, was carved into a separate federal territory in 2019.
Some of the worst violence this year has been in Jammu, where Modi campaigned for votes on Saturday, vowing that “terrorism is on its last legs” in a reference to rebel groups fighting Indian rule.
Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) claim that the changes to the territory’s governance have brought a new era of peace to Kashmir and rapid economic growth.
The implementation of those changes in 2019 was accompanied by mass arrests and a months-long Internet and communications blackout.
While this is the first ballot for the local assembly since 2014, voters took part in national elections in June when Modi won a third term in power.
Farmer Syed Ali Choudhary, 38, from Jammu district, said a local elected government “will be a big relief after so many years” while acknowledging the assembly’s powers will “be much less” than before.
“Something is better than nothing,” he said.
“When we had a local government thousands of people could be seen visiting the secretariat every day. Now you hardly see any because people are upset.”
Many Kashmiris are resentful of the restrictions on civil liberties imposed after 2019, and the BJP is only fielding candidates in a minority of seats concentrated in Hindu-majority areas.
Critics accuse the BJP of encouraging a surge of independent candidates in Muslim-majority areas to split the vote.
A lack of jobs is a key issue. The area has an unemployment rate of 18.3 percent, more than double the national average, according to government figures in July.
Small-scale manufacturing suffered after tax barriers ended with the territory’s changed status.
Critics say the central government has awarded major contracts, such as construction and mineral extraction, to firms outside the territory.
“My biggest concern is unemployment,” said Madiha, 27, a jobless graduate who gave only one name. “The cost of living has reached the sky.”
Indian-administered Kashmir votes in first local polls since special status scrapped
https://arab.news/y5c6z
Indian-administered Kashmir votes in first local polls since special status scrapped
- Voters queued under heavy security for three-phased elections staggered geographically due to security, logistics
- Turnout is expected to be high, unlike in past elections when separatists opposed to Indian rule boycotted polls
Bangladesh mourns Khaleda Zia, its first woman prime minister
- Ousted ex-premier Sheikh Hasina, who imprisoned Zia in 2018, offers condolences on her death
- Zia’s rivalry with Hasina, both multiple-term PMs, shaped Bangladeshi politics for a generation
DHAKA: Bangladesh declared three days of state mourning on Tuesday for Khaleda Zia, its first female prime minister and one of the key figures on the county’s political scene over the past four decades.
Zia entered public life as Bangladesh’s first lady when her husband, Ziaur Rahman, a 1971 Liberation War hero, became president in 1977.
Four years later, when her husband was assassinated, she took over the helm of his Bangladesh Nationalist Party and, following the 1982 military coup led by Hussain Muhammad Ershad, was at the forefront of the pro-democracy movement.
Arrested several times during protests against Ershad’s rule, she first rose to power following the victory of the BNP in the 1991 general election, becoming the second woman prime minister of a predominantly Muslim nation, after Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto.
Zia also served as a prime minister of a short-lived government of 1996 and came to power again for a full five-year term in 2001.
She passed away at the age of 80 on Tuesday morning at a hospital in Dhaka after a long illness.
She was a “symbol of the democratic movement” and with her death “the nation has lost a great guardian,” Bangladesh’s interim leader Muhammad Yunus said in a condolence statement, as the government announced the mourning period.
“Khaleda Zia was the three-time prime minister of Bangladesh and the country’s first female prime minister. ... Her role against President Ershad, an army chief who assumed the presidency through a coup, also made her a significant figure in the country’s politics,” Prof. Amena Mohsin, a political scientist, told Arab News.
“She was a housewife when she came into politics. At that time, she just lost her husband, but it’s not that she began politics under the shadow of her husband, president Ziaur Rahman. She outgrew her husband and built her own position.”
For a generation, Bangladeshi politics was shaped by Zia’s rivalry with Sheikh Hasina, who has served as prime minister for four terms.
Both carried the legacy of the Liberation War — Zia through her husband, and Hasina through her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, widely known as the “Father of the Nation,” who served as the country’s first president until his assassination in 1975.
During Hasina’s rule, Zia was convicted in corruption cases and imprisoned in 2018. From 2020, she was placed under house arrest and freed only last year, after a mass student-led uprising, known as the July Revolution, ousted Hasina, who fled to India.
In November, Hasina was sentenced to death in absentia for her deadly crackdown on student protesters and remains in self-exile.
Unlike Hasina, Zia never left Bangladesh.
“She never left the country and countrymen, and she said that Bangladesh was her only address. Ultimately, it proved true,” Mohsin said.
“Many people admire Khaleda Zia for her uncompromising stance in politics. It’s true that she was uncompromising.”
On the social media of Hasina’s Awami League party, the ousted leader also offered condolences to Zia’s family, saying that her death has caused an “irreparable loss to the current politics of Bangladesh” and the BNP leadership.
The party’s chairmanship was assumed by Zia’s eldest son, Tarique Rahman, who returned to Dhaka just last week after more than 17 years in exile.
He had been living in London since 2008, when he faced multiple convictions, including an alleged plot to assassinate Hasina. Bangladeshi courts acquitted him only recently, following Hasina’s removal from office, making his return legally possible.
He is currently a leading contender for prime minister in February’s general elections.
“We knew it for many years that Tarique Rahman would assume his current position at some point,” Mohsin said.
“He should uphold the spirit of the July Revolution of 2024, including the right to freedom of expression, a free and fair environment for democratic practices, and more.”
